Tear gas fired on protesters in Pakistan

Police and paramilitary troops fired tear gas today to repel hundreds of angry militant Muslims marching on a southern Pakistani air base where US personnel are reportedly working, the authorities said.

Police and roving groups of demonstrators in the southern city of Jacobabad fought pitched battles well into the afternoon as scattered groups of militants kept trying to reach Jacobabad Air Base.

Jacobabad city police said 349 people had been arrested most of them in advance to prevent the protests from materialising.

Jacobabad, which has about 200,000 inhabitants, was sealed off by police to outsiders. All major roads leading into the city were closed, and anyone trying to reach the city was checked thoroughly.

In a separate demonstration several kilometres outside Jacobabad, one demonstrator was killed and 10 were injured, authorities and protest leaders said. No further information was immediately available.

Pakistan’s military government, mindful of political sensitivities, has officially denied that ‘‘US armed services personnel and aircraft’’ are inside the country. The government insists it will not allow Pakistani territory to be used for attacks on Afghanistan.

But on Thursday, Pakistani officials confirmed on condition of anonymity that the country has allowed US military aircraft to land inside its borders. They said President Gen Pervez Musharraf also granted the US use of at least two air bases during air strikes inside Afghanistan.

The officials emphasised that the Americans were not ground forces and did not characterise them as US military personnel. They identified one of the two air bases as Jacobabad news that has enraged militant Muslims.

The crowd in central Jacobabad, which protest leaders from the influential Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party said numbered in the thousands, had gathered outside a hotel and begun moving towards the air base.

Heavily armed authorities, who had been patrolling Jacobabad’s streets for days, first warned them to stop, then fired tear-gas shells into the crowd and bullets into the air.

Protesters responded by throwing stones and shouting slogans, then disbanded into smaller groups and ranged through the city. A jeep filled with paramilitary troops was attacked, authorities said.

At a roadblock 25 kilometres (15 miles) outside town, nearly 2,500 demonstrators a convoy of buses and pedestrians from different religious parties that came from all over Pakistan waited tensely at roadblocks. Police stopped them from proceeding to Jacobabad to join the unrest.

The issue of US personnel in Pakistan is extremely controversial in this Muslim country of 145 million people.

Islamic religious parties sympathetic to Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban consider it a betrayal that their government is helping US-led attempts to destroy terrorist installations in Afghanistan that belong to Osama bin Laden, the main suspect in the September 11 attacks on the US.

Militant leaders promised to penetrate the air base and take action.

‘‘Body bags will be sent to America,’’ said Riaz Durrani, a Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam spokesman. ‘‘Then they will realise the misery.’’

Abdul Ghafoor Hydri, a Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam leader, said at a news conference last night that the party had called for followers to attack the air base and even stage suicide attacks to destroy American aircraft.

Despite the government’s official denial of an American presence, residents of Jacobabad have been saying otherwise.

‘‘People have seen American aircraft landing and taking off during the past couple of days, and especially yesterday,’’ Rashid Bijarani, a farmer in Jacobabad, said today. Others in the city also spoke of seeing US-marked craft in recent days.